John Ging, Gaza’s director of operations for the UN refugee agency UNRWA, made an unprecedented appeal to British Members of Parliament to use their influence against what he said were “crushing sanctions” enacted since Israel declared occupied Gaza a “hostile entity” in September. Ging says that the sanctions are “indiscriminate” and “illegal” and have created “truly appalling living conditions”.

Israel uses the threat of rocket attacks, which have only killed 12 people since 2001, as an excuse for their torturous punishment of all 1.5 million civilians in Gaza. When speaking to the MP’s, Mr. Ging questioned the ability of Israel’s sanctions to lessen that threat.

“This presupposes that the civilian population are somehow more capable of stopping the rocket fire than the powerful military of the occupying power. My message … is that not only are these sanctions not working, but because of their profound inhumanity, they are counterproductive to their stated purpose and while Gaza is not yet an entity populated by people hostile to their neighbor, it inevitably will be if the current approach of collective punitive sanctions continues.”

Mr Ging, whose agency is responsible for 70 per cent of Gaza’s 1.5 million population, said that over the past two years “every hopeful opportunity has been irrationally dashed and followed by even worse circumstances”. He added that Gaza’s civilian population expected more of Israel and the international community, who regularly expressed concern about their humanitarian plight but “to no avail”…

…Mr Ging added that UNRWA was unable to provide more than 61 per cent of the necessary calories to refugees. “At present we do not have sufficient funding to provide just one high nutrient biscuit to 200,000 children in UN schools.”

Israeli officials cite signs of a decline in Hamas’s popularity as evidence that the sanctions are working. But Mr Ging said the “human suffering and misery for the entire civilian population in Gaza was creating fertile ground for the extremists”.

The Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights says that 11 patients have died since last month because their treatment was blocked or delayed. At least 800 more are being denied treatment abroad.

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